We the People

We citizens of these United States have developed an extremely effective way of destroying ourselves. We have decided to stay in our golden past. We have refused to be brought into the modern world. Then, we accuse anyone that points out our problems of lack of patriotism. This guarantees that nothing will ever improve. We will simply slide loudly and with a large splash into oblivion.
We used to think that the Oriental history of walling out change that kept China and Japan from modernizing for centuries was ridiculous. If you look at the present state of our country, you will see that this is exactly what we have done. We don’t learn from the past, we glorify it. We try, very unrealistically to live in it.
We developed a political system that was extremely responsive to the needs of a rapidly industrializing nation. Our government supported industry, commerce and the stockholders that managed our leap into world prominence. Now we are held hostage by these same forces that built us, and we cannot let go.
We failed to automate our industry; to protect the workers‘ jobs, of course. We hamstrung our agriculture by permitting a monopoly to pick the direction it would go, without thought to any consequence but profit. Oil built us. American oil won World War II, and even though the handwriting has been on the wall for fifty years, we refuse to let go of it. The oil companies are diversifying, buying into renewable energy, but we, as a people, are not. Climate change is going to redesign the world’s economy for us. Our leaders stick their heads in the sand. Prudence would dictate that if there were even a chance that this would be barreling down the slope toward us that we should take concrete measures to save ourselves. But we are not prudent people. Fourteen percent of our workforce is unemployed as of this writing. About the same percentage are underemployed. We did this to ourselves. We allowed businesses to move these people’s jobs overseas and bring the products back to this country without any tariff whatsoever. That is freedom.
We are not a democracy. This country was designed as a vehicle for corporate profits. It is business that pays for the campaigns that put people in political office. Therefore, we get leaders and legislators who put the interests of sponsors first. Look at the decisions they have made over the past years. Republican or Democrat, neither party will vote against the interests of big business. The Constitution is simply a panacea. This country is run by an unwritten constitution that exists to insure corporate profits and the welfare of the economic elite. The rest of us are manipulated. We are given bread and games. The term for this form of government is plutocracy